situations.
“So we’re looking for the light?” the pilot asked.
“I need you to drop us as close to the lights as you can, then head back for base. Our goal is to slip in unannounced; having choppers thumping overhead isn’t going to help with the mission.”
“Understood.” The pilot sounded relieved.
We had reached altitude and were now flying across an outer suburb. Below us, Valhalla was a grid of plowed streets and houses with an occasional park or school or shopping center.
“You interested in heading anyplace in particular while we wait?” the pilot asked. We were speaking on an open frequency. Every man in the platoon could hear us. So could Freeman. As a civilian advisor, he was not technically a member of the platoon.
“Freeman, got any ideas?” I asked.
Because of his huge size and icy demeanor, Freeman’s intelligence often went unnoticed. He did not stumble into situations. He considered the angles, studied whatever information he could, and had a keen eye for any advantages to be had. With Freeman, I never needed to worry about uninformed opinions blending in with the facts. Since he did not know any more than me, he simply shook his head.
“What’s it look like beyond those hills?” I asked the pilot, pointing to hills to the west.
“It looks dark; that’s how it looks,” the pilot said. I got the feeling he did not want to stray any farther from town than necessary.
“I can see that,” I said. “What is the terrain like?”
“Forest, mostly. It’s pretty dense.”
“Use your radar; see if you locate a clearing. You may need to drop us off out there,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” the pilot said.
The sun set quickly during the New Copenhagen winter. First the horizon became red and gold and orange—a molten copper sun sinking behind clouds that looked inflamed and infected. Then the sky was purple with gray clouds. As the last streaks of light slowly drained from the sky, the horizon went from indigo to black. Snow- covered trees formed a carpet below us, and mountains looked like phantom shapes in the distance.
“How far out do you want to go?” the pilot asked.
I glanced at Freeman, then said, “Ten, fifteen miles, not any farther than a half day’s hike back to town.”
The pilot headed out over the woodlands, cruising quickly while remaining no more than ten feet from the tops of the trees, a tactic called Earth mapping. The pilot kept us low enough to pass under most tracking technologies. It was a wise precaution.
It only took a couple of minutes to reach our target area. On the off chance that the aliens came late, we had fifteen hours of fuel. We circled and evaluated the terrain, and looked for places where we could set up an ambush. We looked for paths and hollows, places where we could hide should we need to retreat.
We flew for over an hour, cruising over rivers, lakes, and endless woodlands. We skimmed over hills and saw no phantom lights. The moon appeared in the sky, and the first stars began to show. In the distance, we could see the low glow of city lights generating over Valhalla.
“Maybe they aren’t coming,” Thomer said over the interLink.
That thought had occurred to me as well, but I knew better. “Maybe,” I said.
“They’re coming,” Freeman said.
“How do you know?” I asked over a discrete connection that the other men in my platoon would not hear.
“I saw their damned battle plan,” Freeman answered over that same connection.
“You mean the battle simulation they broadcast? Maybe we misunderstood it,” I said. “Maybe they changed their minds.”
A few minutes later the pilot radioed to tell me that he’d spotted the phantom light. I moved to the front of the helicopter to ask where, but didn’t bother asking the question. I could see it clearly myself.
A small dome of light had started to grow out of the forest about twenty miles from us. Its glare shone through the trees like twisted spokes, and the top of the dome rose above the trees, casting alternating waves of red, blue, and yellow into the black sky. The stars above the scene vanished, canceled out by the glare from that dome.
“We need to come in behind it,” I told the pilot.
“Which side is the front?” the pilot asked.
“Let’s come in from the west, the side facing away from town.”
“We’re on our way,” the pilot said. A moment later, however, he signaled me again. “Lieutenant, I ran a satellite sweep of the position. The trees are too thick for us to land around that light source. The closest spot I can drop you is about four miles back.”
“How about to the north?” I asked.
“About the same,” the pilot said. “The closest spot I’ve got is about three miles from their point of origin, but it’s southeast of the light. That will place you between the light and town.”
Not knowing anything about the enemy, I did not want to risk being caught in the open. All I had to go by was my briefing with Admiral Brocius and the Space Angel I had seen on the Mogat planet. If an alien like that caught us in the open, we would be as good as dead. “Got any other options?” I asked.
“No, sir.”
“Okay, get us there quickly. I have a feeling we’re going to need to dig in.”
“Yes, sir,” the pilot said.
“Listen up,” I said over an open frequency that my men would hear in both helicopters. “We’re headed in. The choppers are not here for air support. Once we reach the drop zone, we’re on our own.”
Now came the part I always hated about briefings, the pep talk. “So what’s the latest rumor around base? What have you boys heard about the enemy?” I asked.
Thomer and Philips, veterans of the Mogat invasion, had to have a pretty good idea about what was going on. They were under orders to keep that opinion to themselves, and the clone programming in their brains meant they obeyed orders.
“They showed us a video feed from Terraneau, sir,” one of the men said. The interLink marked the message as coming from Private First Class Scott Huish. “And I heard some officers call them ‘Space Angels.’ ”
“Those officers were full of shit,” I said. “I’ve seen one these speckers up close, and it wasn’t an angel.”
“Are we really fighting aliens, sir?” It was Huish again. “I always thought that only humans lived in this galaxy.”
“I guess that means they came from outside the galaxy,” I said.
“We’re approaching the site,” the pilot told me.
In the distance, the light had grown from a dome to a mountain. It reached high into the sky and continued to spread until it was already more than two miles in diameter. The light was like a clear, bright gel that oozed out, engulfing everything it touched.
As the dome expanded, it spread in every direction. Our gunship escort swept the area first for any sign of the enemy. With its antenna array, the gunship could detect a noise as soft as a heartbeat. Its motion-tracking sensors would scan for movement, then remove interference such as leaves rustling in the wind. Even with the noise produced by chopper blades and wind, the sensors would be able to sort out the sound of a twig snapping or the slight movements of an assassin hiding in the trees.
“I can give you the complete lowdown we have on these aliens before we land. You see that light out there? That light is going to close in around the planet. Those mother-specking aliens travel inside the light. Got that? That is all we know.”
“The drop zone is clear,” the pilot said over a direct frequency.
“Circle it a couple of times,” I said on the same frequency. “I’m not done building their self-esteem.”
“It might be nice if we knew how to communicate with them,” one of my Marines said.
“If we know how to kill ’em, that’s enough for me,” Sergeant Philips said in his distinctive drawl.
“Damned specking right, and that is the only thing we need to know,” I said. “I don’t care what they eat, how they talk, or how they specking reproduce. You boys got that? This is Marines Biology 101; we study how to kill the bastards and leave everything else to the other sciences.”
Then, still using the open frequency, I told the pilot to take us down.
The gunship took one last sweep of the clearing, the searchlights under its belly casting a crisp white beam
